Known as the Great War at
the time, World War I was, indeed, the most disastrous war ever fought
in history. Words are totally inadequate to describe the slaughter, and
statistics too cold to convey the human cost.

13 million are estimated
to have died on the battlefronts of Europe, about 1-1/2 million on the
western front alone in the year 1916. The Russians lost 2-1/2 million killed,
wounded , or taken prisoner in the year 1915. In one battle, Verdun, 700,000
lost their lives. That is 100.000 more than the total losses in the
entire four years of the U.S. Civil War.

This was the war that began
with patriotic fervor on the part of both the soldiers marching off, and
their loved-ones cheering them on.

Some believed that the economic
inter-dependency of European nations would compel governments to call
off the war if it threatened to last more than 6 months. That was an assumption
based on the belief that human beings were rational. Instead, as the costs
of the war mounted, governments increased their demands upon the enemy
with the thoughtthat they had to compensate for the losses.

The German Emperor promised
his soldiers that they would be home "before the leaves fell."

The Schlieffen Plan called
for the defeat of France in 4 weeks, but, instead, German armies were stopped
just short of Paris at the Battle of the Marne River.

Meanwhile, the Germans defeated
and threw back the Russian offensive in the east at the Battle of Tannenberg,
without the help of army units transferred from the west.

On the western front, both
sides dug in, building lines of trenches that extended from the Channel
coast to the Swiss border. Unlike any other war, there would be no possiblity
of outflanking the enemy. Artillery and machine guns gave the advantage
to the defense. Offense was suicidal because it exposed flesh and blood
to the deadly weapons.

On the eastern front, although
the Russians had huge reserves of manpower and generally overwhelmed Austro-Hungarian
armies, the Germans invariably defeated the Russians. The Russians lacked
the industrial base to be able to provide their armies with the huge quantities
of weapons needed in modern warfare.

The Turkish military government,
which had received military aid from the Germans prior to the war, joined
the Central Powers in November, 1914.

Italy, though a part of
the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, did not enter the
war on the side of the Central Powers. England and France promised the
Italians territorial acquisitions after the war and persuaded them to join
on their side in June, 1915.

The United States remained
out of the war until April, 1917. President Woodrow Wilson had popular
support in the determination to remain neutral.

The British put a naval
blockade into place as soon as the war began. The Germans retaliated with
the use of a new weapon, the submarine.

The British blockade interfered
with neutral shipping, and the United States was the largest neutral. The
U.S. protested confiscations of U. S. cargoes, but the British were careful
to compensate for loss of property, and there was no loss of life.

The German submarine, however,
could only stop a merchant vessel by sinking it. Loss of lives and property
was unavoidable. The U.S. protested and the Germans put restraints on their
U-Boat commanders.

Repeated sinkings of vessels
carrying U.S. cargoes occurred, and loss of American lives was involved.
But even the sinking of the passenger liner, the
Lusitania, in May, 1915, in spite of all the outrage it created at
the time, did not change the U.S. policy. President Wilson was re-elected
in November, 1916 after pledging to keep the U.S. out of the war.

Wilson sought to act as
an intermediary between the two belligerents, hoping to bring an end to
the war. But as the war continued, and war aims were increased, Wilson
realized that peace was not possible so long as each side expected victory.
He said as much in a speech he gave in December, 1916; a speech known
as the "peace without victory" speech.

Even as he said this, the
German military command was deciding upon a military solution to the war.
They decided to launch an unrestricted submarine warfare which no longer
exercised restraint to spare neutral shipping. They were willing to take
the risk that the U.S. might intervene against them based on the calculation
that the English and French could be subdued before U.S. power could make
any appreciable difference.

It was unrestricted submarine
warfare, and the heavy loss of American lives and property that, more than
anything else, changed American public opinion and persuaded Wilson to
declare war.

Wilson thought in ideological
terms, and already strongly favored the two democratic nations, England
and France. When the Russian Revolution broke ut in March, 1917, and it
appeared that Russia was establishing a liberal government, he could think
of the war as a struggle between the democracies and the autocratic
governments of the Central Powers.

Furthermore, Wilson had
been giving thought to a new approach to preserving peace in the future.
He saw the balance of power method as having failed to keep the peace and
he looked to a principle of collective security as a means to do so in
the future. That is, democratic nations would form an international organization
to concert collective actionagainst any aggressor.

This vision led Wilson to
coin the phrases that this was a "war to save the world for democracy"
and this was a "war to end all wars."

U.S intervention could not
affect the land war for almost a year because of the time required
to train large numbers of American soldiers and send them across the ocean.
But it did immediately affect the war at sea as the U.S. Navy joined with
the British Navy to combat the submarine. Introduction of the convoy system
in the summer of 1917 slowed the heavy loss of shipping, while increased
shipbuilding provided replacements.

Following the revolution
in Russia, the Russian war effort collapsed, making it possible for the
Germans to transfer troops from the Russian to the western front.

The Germans realized that
time was against them, and that they had to break through in the west before
large numbers of U.S. troops could reinforce the French and the English.
They, therefore, carried out a great offensive beginnning in February,
1918.

The offensive gained more
ground than the Germans had done since the first month of the war. But
in the end it bogged down, and the Germans were thrown on the defensive,
facing a renewed and reinforced enemy whose forces grew with every passing
day.

In September, 1918, the
German army command recognized that they were reaching the limits of their
endurance and asked the emperor to sue for peace.

In January, 1918, President
Wilson had laid out a 14-point basis for peace which called for recognizing
the self-determination of peoples, among other principles. To the Germans,
this appeared to be a much more reasonable basis for peace than any terms
they were likely to receive from the French and the English. Therefore,
the Germans made their peace overtures to the United States government.

President Wilson, however,
was not willing to negotiate with the existing German government which
he considered to be autocratic and not representative of the German people.
This delayed negotiations even while the German war effort, particularly
on the home front, was collapsing.

As workers in the Ruhr rebelled
and sailors in the navy mutinied, and street protests erupted in Berlin
and other German cities, the leading German general (General Ludendorf)
fled, and finally, at the end of October, 1918, the emperor abdicated and
fled into exile in Holland.

In the midst of street demonstrations
in Berlin, leaders of the German Social Democratic Party, Ebert in particular,
were persuaded by their followers to assume power. It was this government
that signed the Armistice Agreement that ended the war.

This had been a war unlike
any other in history. Whole nations had mobilized. The workers in the factory
on the home front were as important as the soldiers at the front in manufacturing
the weapons, equipment and supplies that were so rapidly consumed by the
war.

` Governments took control
of national economies to an unprecented degree in order to plan and allocate
resources for the war effort.

Every able-bodied person
was involved, unemployment was wiped out, class distinctions became less
important, workers incomes increased. Women were employed in large numbers
in the factories.

Loss of life, and destruction
of property were so immense that no side could declare victory. All lost.